Sidekick capabilities and limits
Reference the reads, proposed writes, roles, plan gates, Operator units, and recovery behavior for Sidekick.
4 min read
- Project
- Sidekick panel
Open Sidekick from inside the intended project. The panel is explicitly project-scoped and labels proposals that require review.
Sidekick works within the current project, role, rollout, plan feature, and Operator Unit boundary. It can investigate and propose supported changes; it cannot become a general administrator.
- Finish with
- A clear answer to whether Sidekick can inspect, propose, or never perform a task
This reference describes the Sidekick capabilities exposed in the project dashboard. Availability is cumulative: the current project, workspace role, enabled rollout, plan feature, and Operator-unit balance must all allow the operation.
Read capabilities
- Sidekick cannot delete projects or agents
- It cannot reveal secrets or API keys
- It cannot manage external connections
- Every supported write needs a separately reviewed approval
| Area | Sidekick can inspect | Important limitation |
|---|---|---|
| Project | configuration, health snapshot, deterministic configuration audit, available models | Current project only. |
| Personas | active personas and a persona's safe defaults | Inactive personas are not available. |
| Agents | list, non-secret configuration, knowledge coverage, editable-prompt summary | No internal platform prompt is returned. |
| Knowledge | sources, metadata, indexing state, recent safe run progress, health and attention ranking | No raw source content or raw ingestion errors. |
| Conversations and insights | aggregate briefings, outcomes, patterns, quality gaps, comparisons, connected evidence | Administrator only; bounded aggregates only—never raw transcripts or messages. |
| Actions | safely scoped status for an action started by the authenticated user | It is not a substitute for dashboard verification. |
Proposed write capabilities
| Area | Supported proposal | Review level |
|---|---|---|
| Project | update allowed settings; regenerate bounded business context | Confirm |
| Agent | create, update, apply persona, publish, activate, deactivate | Confirm; publish/activate/deactivate require administrator access |
| Knowledge source | create URL or bounded text sources; update settings; change URL; start, re-sync, cancel, or delete | Confirm; URL changes and URL creation/start require strong confirmation and authority attestation; source deletion is strong approval |
No Sidekick capability deletes a project or an agent. Sidekick also does not create API keys, manage external connections, or read secrets from the dashboard.
Roles, plans, and capabilities
Standard project reads are available to workspace members, administrators, and owners when the project permits Sidekick. Conversation intelligence reads and the administrator-only agent operations require an administrator or owner. Individual deployments can still restrict access further.
The commercial catalog labels the relevant plan features Sidekick (sidekick_access) and Sidekick actions (sidekick_actions). If access is missing, Sidekick is unavailable; if actions are missing or writes are disabled, reads can remain available but proposals cannot be approved and resumed. Conversation Intelligence is separately gated and is not granted merely by Sidekick access.
Operator units and unavailability
Operator units are a project-level monthly allowance shared by Sidekick, MCP, and business briefings. A completed Sidekick turn uses 5 units. Authentication, availability checks, proposal review, approval/rejection, status checks, and failed operations do not consume those units. The ledger reserves units while the turn runs and commits them only when the turn completes or reaches an approval boundary; a non-completing stream releases its reservation.
When the allowance is exhausted, Sidekick returns an unavailable response with the project billing path rather than completing the turn. A missing plan feature is denied separately. Add-on Operator units, where offered, increase the project balance; contact the project administrator for purchasing and billing decisions.
Streaming, failure, and recovery
Sidekick responses use a live stream. The panel may show tokens, read-tool start/completion progress, an approval request, completion, or an error. Tool-progress labels show the operation category, not private tool arguments or internal execution details.
If the stream fails before the turn completes, retry once with the same focused request; it did not finalize Operator usage. If Sidekick reports that accounting could not finalize, retry after the service is available. For a failed or conflicted approved action, inspect its action status and the actual dashboard state, resolve the issue, then create a new proposal—there is no automatic replay of a terminal action. For an approval that expires, reject it, or becomes stale, prepare it again.
Last updated on